Evaluation - In What Way Does Your Product Use, Challenge Or Develop Forms And Conventions?

In our horror opening we use and challenge the forms and conventions of typical horror openings in a number of different ways. We have a conventional victim being a young, white, vulnerable girl. This is a very common victim archetype in many horror and slasher films (Scream , Halloween, etc.)This is because you instantly question what is going to

 happen to her: ‘She’s a weak girl she can’t defend herself!’

In our opening scene we have a main character who you assume is going to be the victim, getting ready for a Halloween party and getting restless waiting for her roommate to arrive. Her anxiousness puts the audience on edge as well as her being alone, another classic horror convention.

We encourage this even more by having a shot of the girl getting dressed (in night vision) into her party outfit. The night vision effect and angles of the camera looking down on her emphasize that she’s a potential victim and that something’s about to happen.  Voyeurism...also this night vision is meant to be from the murders point of view and we see this more when there are long distance shots of the girl smoking on the balcony. This gives more of a scenes that the girls is being stalked by someone.    

                                       

 She is also drinking, therefore sinning, and in most horror/slasher films the person sinning normally dies. I think this helps interest the audience. As you see her drink you want to tell her to stop (this makes you connect with the character) so she doesn't get too drunk as she won’t be able to defend herself in a survival situation. 

Editing effects, camera movement and the song Tainted Love by Marilyn Manson all emphasise her intoxication via conventional cinema methods.

Red herrings are also used for example when the buzzer goes off, she looks in the intercom and sees a scary face, however it is only a mask being worn by her friend.

The way we have challenged the forms of a normal horror film is the fact that she is not in fact the victim - it is her best friend who gets killed in the lift. We only see her via a screen saver on the laptop. This is quite rare for a horror film, and we have created suspense for the audience yet surprise as they are misled as to who the victim is going to be.

The kill in this horror however is quiet conventional as we use a knife , the main weapon from most slashers. Also there is a close up of a girl screaming. lastly a mirror with words spelt in blood all aspects you could find in a stereotypical horror.

Evaluation - What Kind Of Media Institution Might Distribute Our Media Product And Why?

I think the media institution that might distribute our production would be Revolver Entertainment.

revolver group is a British multi-award-winning film distributer and producer which works internationally with different digital media companies such as Apple itunes, NetFlix, Amazon, Nintendo Wii, Sony Playstation, Vudu, and etc...

Now after all the works and efforts that we have put in making our production, We need a reliable company to market and circulate our film, not only for home viewing (DVDs,Blue-rayS,..) but also in theatres. Film distributers promote the films by putting them on Tv ads, Posters, Websites, Trailers, or using any creative way to interest the target audience to pay for watching the film. And that is how how a film becomes a success. And because our film does not feature any movie star, it is important to get distributed in the best way possible.

Revolver Entertainment is one of the leading film distributers in the Uk that has released some good british horror films similar to our production, such as: The chatroom, The woman, Atrocious, Sick Nurses And The Cellar Door.

Having offices in London and Los Angles, The company provides a world wide distribution of many films every year.

Evaluation - Who Was Your Target Audience And How And Why Did You Attract Them?

Our target audience was the usual demographic you would expect from the slasher sub-genre. The main target group were middle-working class, white males aged between 16-24. 

They are for the most part, students either in college or university, or they are at least seeking some form of education from an institution. Basically the typical American 'college aged' person.

They are the type of people that generally enjoy having fun in their youth because "you can only live once" and go around partying or throwing parties, disobeying their elders and behaving promiscuously. This is because most horrors appeal to this demographic in general, but our production should appeal even more to this demographic seeing as one of the characters in our opening sequence gets killed at a party.

The plot largely involves 2 female characters setting up a party in the early evening which again follows the conventions our target audience would expect from a horror film. And because the character that gets killed off is an attractive female, this would satisfy the predominantly male audience who prefer watching females for obvious reasons! And because the female characters are young teens this brings about their vulnerability because society deems young people and the female gender as weak and submissive.

Our opening sequence didn’t even show a glimpse of who or what the killer was, (which is typical of the slasher sub-genre) it only showed the stalker sequences, i.e. the point of view, over the shoulder and long shots all from the killers perspective. I would say this is sticking to the convention of keeping the killers identity a secret for as long as possible. 

Also one massive convention our opening stuck to was having the promiscuous, practical joke pulling character getting killed off. In nearly every slasher film, the character that does this normally ends up suffering a disastrous fate. In the intercom system she pretended to be a killer in a mask scaring the main character half to death! Needless to say she was killed soon after. 

Evaluation - What Have We Learned About New Technologies

During our project we used a variety of new technologies that most of us hadn't used before. For instance, I hadn't ever used Blogger before and had to learn how to make a blog, create posts, insert images, upload videos, etc. which was quite easy once I got to grips with it. However there were many harder things we had to learn about and use such as the camera for filming and iMovie software for editing. We had quite a lot of trouble with our filming and the camera in general as our first shoot would not upload to the iMac's we were using. This required us to re-shoot the entire sequence which turned out to be a blessing as we improved on a lot of our mistakes.

Also during the filming we had multiple problems with lighting. We found it quite difficult during some shots as most of our production was filmed indoors. With normal domestic lighting it became too bright and didn't particularly have the right sort of feel for the horror genre. However, we remedied this by filming at night and having dull lighting so that you could see the action clear enough but still in a suitably creepy environment.

We then had more trouble with the iMac's and iMovie software when uploading due to various hard drives on the computers and network complexities. We saved our work to the wrong drive at first so our first lot of editing was completely lost which again required us to re-import the footage which was quite time consuming and by this stage extremely frustrating. Once the footage was re-imported and saved on the correct drive we then had trouble editing it effectively. Not knowing how to use all of the tools before an introductory session we had which helped us quite a bit to understand and enable us to edit at a higher quality. In the end we did manage to successfully shoot, edit, evaluate and plan our production to a high quality and we are all satisfied with the final product.

Evaluation - How Have We Progressed Since The Preliminary Task?

Since we started our AS Media coursework we have done a lot of work with the camera and practiced an awful lot with how we were going to film our opening sequence. Infact we actually shot an entire practice run of our opening sequence and looked it over to see what shots looked good and what ones didn't. Admittidely it took a lot of time to find the correct shot angles, distance and movement. But in the end it seems to have paid off as our final production has a wide variety of shot types and quite clean movement. For example theres a range of shots such as establishing shots, long shots, low angle, high angle, worms eye, point of view, over the shoulder etc. All of which we've learnt since the preliminary task and aimed to perfect to provide a clear understanding of the characters position within the opening sequence. For instance the vulnerable characters were both mainly filmed from a high angle connoting that they are being looked down upon, made smaller and overall make them seem helpless and alone. Using the techniques we've picked up and learnt we've been able to create an effective opening sequence that fits the specified genre.

Storyboards For Our Production

Page 1:-

These are the beginning scenes of our opening sequence up till the part where the body of her best friend is found in the lift.

Pages 2 & 3:-
These parts of our opening sequence are where the other friend is murdered however we have 2 alternate endings in which the final murder of the opening sequence differentiates.     
                                              

Reconnaissance For Filming Location

We need a building with 4 floors and a lift for our opening sequence as well as an intercom system. I think the location I've photographed fits the criteria for our filming.

"The 4th Floor"

Lift Interior

Landing That Leads From The Lift To The Flat

Intercom System